North Lanarkshire Council
A kind reader from North Lanarkshire has sent me a copy of the following 'motion' which is to be debated at a full meeting of the Council later today.
"This Council notes with concern that a settlement on equal pay still has not been reached; requests that the Equal Pay Working Group makes a full report to Council on the reasons for the delay and that from now on, the Working group gives a full report on proceedings after each meeting of the group to the relevant Committees and to Council, so that appropriate action can be taken to resolve this issue."
I have to say I hope the 'motion' gets passed because the content seems eminently reasonable to me - that instead of a small clique of senior officials and councillors keeping calling the shots, that every councillor in North Lanarkshire should be able to understand what is being said and done in their name - and be able to question the Council leadership about what's been going on.
Not least because the same people in charge now are the same people who have been making a terrible mess of equal pay and there Council's local pay arrangements for the past 12 years, so they ought to be under the closest and toughest of scrutiny if you ask me.
I know that the SNP group have been critical of the Labour-led Council's actions and here is a a previous post from the blog site explaining what the SNP have had to say.
North Lanarkshire News (13 December 2014)
A kind reader from North Lanarkshire has sent me a copy of a press release issued by the SNP in connection with the ongoing equal pay dispute.
What appears to be happening is that a small group of senior councillors and chief officials are running the show, while keeping everyone else in the dark including opposition SNP councillors and backbench Labour councillors.
Which is completely outrageous if you ask me, because effectively the same group of people who got North Lanarkshire Council into this mess are still in charge today and they have a vested interest in sweeping things under the carpet rather than bringing all the facts out into the open.
I have yet to hear a critical word about the Council's behaviour from any Labour politician in North Lanarkshire, by the way, but if that changes, if any Labour MP or MSP does decide to stand up and speak out, then I'll report what they have to say - right here on the blog site.
Constituency MSP for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth Jamie Hepburn has today expressed concern about the apparent lack of progress by North Lanarkshire Council in settling outstanding Equal Pay claims by council workers.
In a secret session of the NLC Policy and Resources Committee on Thursday 4th December 2014 councillors received their first report on the equal pay dispute since June.
SNP group leader Councillor David Stocks stated:
“The papers contained little real, hard information and SNP councillors were disappointed by the lack of real answers to questions we asked. The papers even stated that was the first such equal pay report to councillors since last June.”
“It’s the same old veil of secrecy, with only a select few knowing what’s going on on the Council side, with 90% of elected Councillors kept in the dark.”
Commenting Mr Hepburn said:
“This is a matter I wrote to NLC about in June and I still await a substantive reply from the council. I have once again written to the Chief Executive for an update on the dispute.”
“I am most concerned with the apparent lack of transparency being shown over this issue. I understand that it is over ten years since the first assessments recommending equal pay were carried out and any further delay gives the impression that the council are prevaricating over the settlement of the dispute.”
ENDS
